[HN Gopher] Mundane chores are all the rage in gaming
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Mundane chores are all the rage in gaming
Author : nathan_phoenix
Score : 183 points
Date : 2022-06-15 10:01 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| We used to make fun of our roommate in college, who would
| notoriously never clean, but would spend hours a day playing a
| video game in which a little robot cleaned a house.
| crikeyjoe wrote:
| bobthechef wrote:
| trundler wrote:
| Link plz
| whacim wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220615100202/https://www.econo...
| trundler wrote:
| Thank you!
| freeCandy wrote:
| Somewhat less broken page: https://archive.md/1OsVN
| Gunax wrote:
| Simpsons mocked it years ago:
| https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/Yard_Work_Simulator
| onpensionsterm wrote:
| I'm not sure the qualifier 'in gaming' is necessary. Lots of us
| spend a our free time doing gardening, DIY, walking or cooking
| for entertainment.
| lupire wrote:
| That's a huge difference!
|
| Call of Duty hits different if it's not a video game, and
| cleaning your house hits different when it's only inside the
| video game.
|
| On the other hand, Chess and other classical non-physical-sport
| games are pretty much the same in meat space and on the
| computer.
| rictic wrote:
| It's definitely different, but it can be pretty similar
| really. Tending my actual plants and tending plants in
| stardew valley are both pleasant things I like to do while
| listening to an audiobook or podcast.
| fatnoah wrote:
| My 14 year old son and I found a gaming connection in Farming
| Simulator. There's something satisfying to both of us to go
| through the tasks of plowing, fertilizing, seeding, and
| harvesting a field with and upgrade path that allows it all to be
| done more efficiently. Going back and forth with the equipment is
| somehow Zen-like.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Is there any business working on remote controlled robots or is
| everyone only focused on AI? Seems like you could probably find a
| lot of cheap labor if they can control the robot from their
| house.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It's coming / happening, there's Japanese elderly people
| operating welcoming / serving robots, military servicemen
| operating drones, and of course every operator job in your
| power plant and whatnot is that kind of work.
| lupire wrote:
| You also need a robot delivery robot as well as an underclass
| of cheaper foreign labor.
| RedNifre wrote:
| That already exists, there are construction sites where
| excavators work 24/7, being remote controlled by people from
| different time zones, to not break work time laws.
| csense wrote:
| > work time laws
|
| What place has a law that prevents you from hiring three sets
| of locals to work three different 8-hour shifts?
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| > What place has a law that prevents you from hiring three
| sets of locals to work three different 8-hour shifts?
|
| You hire 2 people to work 12-hour shifts. The machine is
| moving in your country, but the employees work somewhere
| (and for someone else) with lax labor laws.
| lupire wrote:
| OK but that's not much related to work time laws, that's
| related to work pay laws and market conditions.
|
| The benefit of squeezing away the lunch break isn't
| important to an overall job.
| farleykr wrote:
| Why though? I don't have an issue with your question or the
| idea of people remotely controlling pressure washers but whats
| the case for automation over elbow grease? Why do we always
| feel the need to automate and optimize instead of just being
| happy with things taking time and being difficult?
| allendoerfer wrote:
| You are on Hacker News.
|
| Wikipedia says: A hacker is a person
| skilled in information technology who uses their technical
| knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a
| computerized system by non-standard means.
| farleykr wrote:
| Point taken. But that doesn't mean we can't challenge the
| idea that hacking is the right approach to any given idea
| that is posed on this website.
| allendoerfer wrote:
| Depends on whether your goal is to have fun/be a human
| being or to work towards our future as immortal explorers
| of the universe.
| Karsteski wrote:
| Because instead we can delegate tasks that no one wants to do
| to robots, machinery and computers, and instead focus human
| labour and brain power on other things. Which is how we got
| to the point that we are at in the first place.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| the reality is somewhat more complicated than that. Every
| time you outsource something you also lose a means to
| exercise your brain power or your physical body. It's why
| many of us are in decidedly worse shape than some of our
| ancestors. There's a company in the Netherlands that makes
| mechanical rather than electric lifts[1] that involves
| human action. One result, people who use them are less
| frail and sick. It's a technology that augments rather than
| replaces the human body.
|
| And there's a big difference between the two. We got to
| where we are because a lot of the things we built have
| aided us and increased human potential, not diminished it.
| Even a gun which can be used for good or bad ultimately
| leaves decision making to someone with a brain. Putting
| that gun on a robot and even giving the ability to make a
| decision up? That's a very different kind of technology.
|
| [1]https://www.vertiwalk.com/
| candiddevmike wrote:
| My point is AI to control a robot to pick strawberries is way
| more of a leap than someone picking strawberries by remote
| controlling a robot.
| bart_spoon wrote:
| I'm not sure it is. Yes, an AI solution isn't necessarily
| an easy problem to solve, but once it is solved, it scales
| extremely well. Having someone pick strawberries by robot
| does not. For every robot, you need an individual at the
| helm. How do you train them? How do deal with fluctuations
| in the number of people interested in picking at any given
| time? In a game like described above, part of the appeal is
| people have 0 obligations. They can start when they'd like,
| they can finish when they'd like, and there is no real
| world prize/penalty based on how well/poorly they perform.
| A person can hop on for 30 seconds or 5 hours, on a whim.
| They can get distracted, completely screw up, or sit idly
| while they do something else, and there are no real world
| consequences. If you try to recreate that same lack of
| obligation for a real world problem, you very likely could
| be setting yourself up for hurdles you simply can't deal
| with. If you begin to add consequences, you remove the
| appeal of the games with no obligations, and people won't
| participate.
|
| AI is hard to get going, but I'm not sure it is any more
| difficult than some of these other options, and once you
| do, you will scale far better.
| farleykr wrote:
| Right, but why not just go out in the field and pick
| strawberries instead of trying to involve AI and robots? To
| me this is an area where Ian Malcom's point about
| can/should applies.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Because as this article shows, there is a large number of
| folks who would consider doing this type of work remotely
| but would not do it in person? Because it would enable
| folks who are handicapped to do this kind of work?
| Because it's simpler to do than perfecting an AI (hell
| you could train an AI based on this work)?
| farleykr wrote:
| I am totally onboard with helping folks who are
| handicapped and addressing other issues of disadvantage
| or injustice. My point is that I don't think it would be
| useful to try to make the act of strawberry picking
| itself easier.
| riversflow wrote:
| Berry farming in Calfornia is rapidly disappearing
| because our cost of living is so high it makes it more
| economical to ship year round from Chile. Many other
| crops will likely follow, at least according to a friend
| in agricultural finance.
|
| Medium term, as the global QoL increases the cost of
| labor for intensive crops are going make our diets very
| bland without further mechanization.
|
| Fruit picking is monotonous and back breaking work that
| pays absolutely miserably. That we have to import labor
| to do it, and even imported labor complains and strikes
| about pay says a lot.
| MrPatan wrote:
| Have you ever picked strawberries for a whole day? I
| haven't, but I don't hear good things about it.
| petercooper wrote:
| That's currently a huge problem in the UK:
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-61568286 ..
| enough so that farmers are importing fruit from overseas
| to resell rather than grow and pick their own.
| Karsteski wrote:
| You're free to leave your job and go pick strawberries in
| 30 degree heat for a summer. You'd quickly see why no one
| wants to do such jobs. You speak like someone who has
| never worked in a factory or out in the fields. It's not
| glamorous, and there's a reason why these jobs are not
| desirable.
| farleykr wrote:
| I worked manual labor jobs of varying types for the first
| ten years I was a part of the work force and I
| experienced many types of suffering during such work,
| including being driven so hard I passed out and almost
| losing my foot to a stump grinder. I couldn't get my boot
| off because my foot was so swollen. Farming is inherently
| dignified and noble. The problem with picking
| strawberries is the corruption that would drive the
| strawberry pickers to pick as much as possible at any
| cost.
| ImprobableTruth wrote:
| ... because one is backbreaking labor while the other is
| something that people might even be willing to do
| recreationally (look at farming simulator)?
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Have you ever picked strawberries professionally? My
| understanding is that it's physically demanding and
| exhausting. Why not have automated fields providing
| cheaper produce?
| wccrawford wrote:
| While I'm sure there's some truth to that, a lot of the
| "mundane chore" games are fun because they remove the un-fun
| parts, like having a boss, being required to do things on a
| schedule, and not being allow to screw things up.
|
| Even just having the threat of being fired over your head is
| enough to make those chores not be fun, even without all the
| other stresses.
| NateEag wrote:
| Yep, this tracks.
|
| My wife and I have been playing co-op Stardew Valley lately,
| and while it's a "farming sim", most of the ugly parts of
| farming are conveniently left out:
|
| * cleaning up animal poop * spreading animal poop on fields *
| slaughtering animals / pest control * working with deadly
| tools like power take-offs * competing with giant factory
| farms [though we just finished the first in-game year, so
| maybe Joja Corp will start having that effect in future
| years]
|
| Almost the essence of game design is "oversimplifying life in
| a way that makes it fun while leaving the player with
| meaningful connections to their reality".
| Otternonsenz wrote:
| I can tell you from the farm my wife and I operate
| (currently in our 7th in game year), you will eventually
| become the giant factory farm to get to the end game.
|
| But that's why I love Stardew Valley in a different way
| than my wife. It hits the comfy aspect for her, a light
| dating sim, plus the combat is light enough that she's
| gotten good at it there than she does in other games. For
| me, I get to optimize farm layout and selling strategies
| (like me realizing after all this time in-game that Slime
| Eggs are a high dollar item and totally should have gotten
| a slime hutch much sooner)
| elif wrote:
| What really happened is that "competitive online gameplay" now
| requires you to do outside research to determine the game meta,
| usually some kind of grind to achieve said meta, and only at that
| point can you begin to use your brain to optimize your individual
| performance. And you have to do all that fast enough to keep up
| with the current season before the meta changes.
|
| This is different from the games we played growing up, where from
| the beginning you could use your brain to optimize, improve, and
| do the brain things that give satisfaction.
|
| "Mundane chores" that gamers do are now mostly part of the "meta
| grind" but also niche mundane tasks like, say, trading a certain
| resource, doing a dungeon for the 200th time but faster, etc are
| in the few remaining places where you can derive this kind of
| satisfaction.
|
| Developers have become so hyper focused on ensuring the "meta"
| play is balanced (and requires you to grind in their game), that
| they patch out these chores as "quality of life" improvements.
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| Games nowadays are less competitive than they used to be, see
| the simplification of controls in RTS and simplification of
| shooter mechanics (i.e. no quake) etcetc
| dehrmann wrote:
| > simplification of shooter mechanics (i.e. no quake)
|
| Does it get any simpler than UT with instagib?
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| Have to seen professional csgo matches? Players spend
| thousands of hours mastering smoke and flash throws and
| recoil patterns and bhopping, and flick shots. The skill
| ceiling for competitive team csgo is absolutely insane. Dota
| and lol and eve and farming simulator are right up there too.
| fuckcensorship wrote:
| Now go watch Valorant.
| jordan_curve wrote:
| You are correct to point out that games have gotten simpler
| in a certain sense, but I wouldn't conflate that with being
| less competitive.
|
| Simple games can be very competitive because the best players
| can become much better at them. Chess and Go are good
| examples.
| arduinomancer wrote:
| What does this have to do with chore simulator games?
|
| Did you read the article?
| mrcheesebreeze wrote:
| pov: you play hearts of iron 4
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| That seems orthogonal to the article itself. The draw of these
| games is in part, their familiarity and perhaps lack of
| competition with other people.
| cooperadymas wrote:
| The overlap of people who engage in "competitive online
| gameplay" and those who play "PowerWash Simulator" is probably
| not that large. And it's even less likely that the latter is in
| any way replacing the former.
|
| I'd surmise that the people engaging in mundane chore games are
| those that want mindless entertainment.
| elif wrote:
| I disagree. I certainly play both types of game. Sure, you
| don't /need/ to have the most efficient pattern in power wash
| simulator. They hardly punish you even in use of your time,
| but when you hit that perfectly aligned parallel line with no
| streaks, it sure feels good. And that is the core of the
| gameplay satisfaction..
|
| "Playerskill mattering" has become largely inaccessible in
| competitive studio games, so these indie games are able to
| scratch that itch by letting you jump in and immediately see
| the reward of improving your hand eye coordination, path
| planning, etc.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| blueflow wrote:
| Have you ever played Animal Crossing? Its basically occupational
| therapy keeping you busy with maintaining your island-garden. And
| its hugely popular.
| skciva wrote:
| Have you ever lived in modern society? Its basically
| occupational therapy keeping you busy with maintaining your
| <insert local environment>. And its hugely popular.
| blueflow wrote:
| I understand what you are talking about, but i just dont have
| that perspective. I just came back from replacing the mudgard
| and drivers door on a Citroen. Its going back to service in
| these minutes.
| xnacly wrote:
| I tried it before but it just seems incredibly boring to me
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Once I realized that real life chores are an excellent way to
| exercise and feel productive, I love doing chores.
|
| Mopping a floor by standing on a rag is great for the core.
| pixxel wrote:
| True! I mow my lawn with a push mower for the exercise.
| Neighbours think I'm nuts. I have toyed with getting a scythe
| but I have pets and the unthinkable could happen.
| bombcar wrote:
| It'd be pretty hard to hit a pet with a scythe used
| correctly, as you have full control of the blade at all times
| and it's pretty easy to stop/divert if necessary. I'd rank it
| about as dangerous as a push mower, which could catch a tail
| I guess.
|
| My dad got one years ago from https://scythesupply.com and it
| works great, especially with the longer/taller weeds. Looks
| like they only have left-handed ones in stock "right" now.
| elevaet wrote:
| I used to use a scythe. It got a lot of thumbs up and such
| from passers-by. It's a pretty fun way to cut the grass; if
| you sharpen the blade nicely it's surprisingly effective. I
| used to use it in combo with a push mower, they're good on
| that super long grass that your push mower can't get through.
|
| Nowadays I've succumbed to laziness and convention and use an
| electric trimmer and mower, but the scythe still comes out
| once in a while for kicks.
| rendang wrote:
| Sounds like a great activity for pondering the meaning of
| life, like Levin in Anna Karenina
| lazyjones wrote:
| Push mowers are actually best for the grass because of the
| scissor-like action, especially if you cut it low. I use them
| in combination with a scythe to cut long grass (I let it grow
| in the colder months).
| ErikAugust wrote:
| Does the forklift driving in Shenmue qualify as one of the first
| "mundane chores" in video gaming?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Surely "Desert Bus" set the precedent for driving a commercial
| vehicle in video games.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| I think Euro Truck Simulator was the first game of this sort that
| I can think of that really had some kind of broad-ish appeal to
| it. Not necessarily "mundane chore" but more like "job is a game"
| game.
|
| My father in law is a trucker and the _only_ video game he plays
| is the Euro /American Truck Simulator games. Which I find
| interesting because I don't think I would ever be interested in a
| game where you write computer software as the main goal.
| _old_dude_ wrote:
| I will show my age, but did you try core war [1, 2] ?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_War [2]
| https://www.corewar.io/
| capitol_ wrote:
| Maybe you like factorio? That is surprisingly similar to
| software dev IMHO.
| satsuma wrote:
| i'd argue factorio is closer to electrical engineering than
| software dev, but it definitely scratches the same itch of a
| well-engineered solution to a novel problem.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| I had to stop playing Factorio because I felt it was too much
| like work. The "obsessive refacoring and optimization"
| aspects of the game are like crack cocaine to me.
| WJW wrote:
| There are several games like this in the "Zachtronics" genre,
| like Shenzen I/O or Exapunks. They revolve around programming
| puzzles, often with very low level languages or with other
| constraints. They can be a lot of fun, especially because there
| is often a real sense of progress. The story evolves after each
| puzzle you solve, instead of just "there is another ticket
| waiting for you in JIRA" style tedium that a programming job
| can be like.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| Even Factorio was too much like programming to me and I had
| to stop playing because it became too much like work. I can't
| imagine a game where I actually have to write anything closer
| to software than that.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I know of a lot of software developers who LOVE Factorio,
| because it ticks the boxes that their day job doesn't while
| using the same problem solving whatsits.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| I guess I'm lucky that I personally feel like I have a
| job that ticks the boxes, so I can focus on "non-boxes"
| outside of my day job :)
| gigaflop wrote:
| TIS-100 may still be of interest to you. It involves a highly-
| constrained development environment, with very clear goals, on
| a very unfamiliar style of system.
|
| It's more of a puzzle game with programming elements, than a
| programming game. Understanding how code works simply makes it
| easier.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| I miss cheats in modern(ish) videogames. Luckily, you can get
| some with emulation of older (cheatless, or hard-to-cheat-at)
| games.
|
| Eg. pokemon (gb/gbc/gba) with cheats is still a great game.. you
| can explore everything, infinite hp/pp, catch-all pokeballs, go
| everywhere, see everything, catch everything you need/want, fast
| power-ups and evolutions, without the constant grind of powering
| up your pokemon and running back to pokemon centers.
|
| Same with games like GTA (although, there is not a lot of
| grinding here)... you can still play through the whole story, do
| all the missions even when invincible, have a lot of fun, but
| without the "getting kiled" parts and restarting the same mission
| sequence 50 times.
|
| Somehow in modern times, cheating (to avoid the grind) has turned
| from inputing some random combination of commands to paying
| actual money for premium crystals or whatever, that give you a
| competitive edge against AI (and real-life) enemies, or in some
| game (clash of clans, etc.) to just make the obsurdly long wait
| times shorter. I get the monetization aspect, and developers
| getting paid aspect, but eg. Age of empires developers got paid
| too, and i can still type "coinage" in the chat window to get
| 1000 gold without paying extra money.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I disagree with pretty much everything here. Cheating in single
| player games is super lame. It's fun to be a god for a brief
| period but quickly it just makes the game really boring.
| Pokemon with infinite hp sounds awful and will massively
| compound any sense of a grind because now all fighting is
| pointless. Some games may be grindy but cheating for instant
| gratification is likely worse.
|
| I would also argue most games are not really that grindy. It's
| actually... rare to see in any single player game. If anything
| most games put you at risk of becoming too powerful too fast.
| If there's a grind it is usually for the last 1% of content.
| And very few games actually try to sell you power ups for
| single player content. That's really not a common thing as some
| people claim.
|
| Multiplayer games are a different beast, but you definitely
| don't want cheaters there either. Not wanting long progression
| curves for multiplayer games is a reasonable ask. Allowing
| cheaters is not.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _Cheating in single player games is super lame. It's fun to
| be a god for a brief period but quickly it just makes the
| game really boring._
|
| Probably depends on the person and the game. If they're
| enjoying the game as an interactive storytelling medium,
| playing through it on god-mode is probably not significantly
| worse than struggling to win; it's no worse than a movie.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I doubt it. There's still a big difference between very low
| difficulties and god mode. God mode in the typical sense
| exposes the cracks in the game and breaks the immersion.
|
| And if you enjoy dicking around and abusing cheats that's
| fine but it's about on par with smothering fine dining with
| hot sauce. Or reading the summary of a novel rather than
| the book.
| simion314 wrote:
| Or I played this game already 3 times and I don't care
| about the lockpicking mini-game since I already done it
| 100 times, or I already crawled on some stupid long cave
| levels where the developers just spammed spiders, I want
| to enjoy certain parts and not waste my limited time on
| the stuff I don't enjoy.
|
| Unfortunately few games have good modding tools, but the
| few games that have you will notice players using mods to
| "cheat" away parts that they no longer enjoy , like
| skipping some terrible level in Dragon Age Origins on
| repeat play-troughs. Other time saving mods are things
| like increase inventory capacity (it is not immersive
| anyway you can put in your pockets 50 swords anyway so
| why not double it and save your precious little time and
| not travel to a merchant).
| rez9x wrote:
| I prefer a little challenge, but it's clear there's a
| demographic for this with the 'journalist mode' in many new
| games.
| gs17 wrote:
| > Pokemon with infinite hp sounds awful and will massively
| compound any sense of a grind because now all fighting is
| pointless. Some games may be grindy but cheating for instant
| gratification is likely worse.
|
| Yeah, cheating in Pokemon is what finally killed my love for
| the games as a kid. A friend wanted to show me his cool
| Action Replay, turned on every cheat and left my game saved
| in a state where it would be a lot of work to get back to
| "normal". Somehow it revealed all the grindy bits that I had
| been okay with up until that point.
|
| But it definitely does depend on the person. My friend was
| still having fun with his Pokemon games after. Another friend
| in high school seemed to get more fun out of typing the level
| skip code on Starcraft than beating the levels the intended
| way.
| Sakos wrote:
| Weird. I'm disillusioned with games that have grind as a
| major pillar. So my most memorable games have been games
| like Soma or Outer Wilds. Can't say I like games as a whole
| any less, I just avoid a number of genres.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Like what games? Outside of mobile games I find this
| pretty rare.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| City builders like city skylines or sim city are much more
| fun with infinite money, at least for me. I could care less
| about the financial part, I just like building!
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Sure, I buy that. But presumably you're just interested in
| building cities, not completing challenges or a story mode
| or whatever. I've never played that specific title.
| bombcar wrote:
| Especially since the "money" side of those games is always
| so very weak, you just need to learn a few steps and you'll
| effectively have infinite money anyway.
| Arrath wrote:
| Yeah. Either I cheat myself infinite money or I set up a
| basic, in the black city, turn the speed as high as it'll
| go and go eat dinner. Functionally the same result, so
| why waste the time?
| bombcar wrote:
| Sometimes I kind of wish the city simulator games had
| buildings and roads be free - the _only_ money issue you
| had to worry about was balancing monthly maintenance
| expenses with taxes, as the cost to "build" isn't really
| a problem at all.
| datalopers wrote:
| > Cheating in single player games is super lame
|
| Who cares? It's a single player game and doesn't affect other
| players whatsoever. People can enjoy it how they want.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Sure. People can also just waste their lives away on shitty
| drugs. It's their lives and aside from some edge cases I'm
| willing to ignore it doesn't affect other people.
|
| But maybe it's not unreasonable to have an opinion that
| it's a super lame choice. Maybe seems foolish. Or likely to
| lead to lesser appreciation of the art/life.
| nullstyle wrote:
| pr0zac wrote:
| As I've gotten older and busier I've started using cheats and
| walkthroughs and methods to skip parts of games I don't enjoy
| much more often. I'm an adult with real difficulties and
| responsibilities and stressors. I spend 60+ hours a week
| running a startup. I have other hobbies like rock climbing
| and Magic to struggle against and push myself to get better
| at.
|
| I understand that the challenge can be a lot of fun, I
| finished both Hades and Doom Eternal on their hardest
| difficulty and really loved my time with both but sometimes a
| challenge isn't what I want out of a game and I just want to
| enjoy the story or explore the world or blow off steam.
|
| Video games for me are usually a relaxing past-time I enjoy
| in the small amount of free-time I have available and I'm
| often not willing to get frustrated slogging through slow
| sections or trying to overcome difficult ones. So you bet
| your ass I'm playing Elden Ring with an easy-mode mod, save-
| scummed constantly in X-Com, used infinite money cheats in
| City Skylines, and fast travel anywhere in Witcher 3.
|
| If you prefer playing games differently from me and want a
| challenge when I don't that's totally fine, I hope you're
| having a great time cause the way each of us play doesn't
| affect or take away from the other person experience or goal
| in any way.
|
| People are allowed to enjoy different things or even the same
| things in different ways and its super lame to call them
| super lame for something so inconsequential as how they play
| video games.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| > So you bet your ass I'm playing Elden Ring with an easy-
| mode mod, save-scummed constantly in X-Com, used infinite
| money cheats in City Skylines, and fast travel anywhere in
| Witcher 3.
|
| These all seem pretty reasonable to me. The first one is a
| desired difficulty level. The second one... well that one's
| kind of on you depending on how granular it was. The third
| one is a desired game mode. The fourth one is just quality
| of life.
|
| Elden ring was poorly balanced imo. I would imagine if
| you're less skilled an easy mode would still give you the
| full game. But I stand pretty firm that an infinite health
| mode would utterly ruin it.
|
| Save scumming because something went poorly vs repeatedly
| save scumming a high risk move until the dice fall
| favorably seems a little lame to me.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Cheating in single player games is super lame. It's fun to
| be a god for a brief period but quickly it just makes the
| game really boring.
|
| In many single player games, cheats are isomorphic to
| configurable difficulty options and allow you to tune the
| game to the challenges of interest.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Sort of. The lowest difficulty may be stupidly easy, not
| even requiring comprehension of the game mechanics. But
| it's rarely so blatant that it would be described as a god
| mode.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Not all cheats are "god mode" and there are games that
| use various cheats the same way other games use
| multidimensional difficulty settings, as the means to
| disable or enable particular subsystems or dimensions of
| challenge (or bypass them, e.g., by providing infinite
| resources of one kind so that the system addressing that
| resource can be ignored.)
| aloisdg wrote:
| > it just makes the game really boring.
|
| Oh boy no. Maybe for you. Maybe for some. With a bit of
| empathy should be able to imagine that not everyone think
| like you do. What if someone wants to play pokemon for the
| exploration, lore and care taking of pokemon. For that
| person, fighting and leveling is a chore. Maybe someone does
| not have the actual time for the grind before each arena.
|
| > Pokemon with infinite hp sounds awful and will massively
| compound any sense of a grind because now all fighting is
| pointless
|
| What if the grind was not a goal or what if we actually
| doesnt want to fight at all. Pacific run exists. Let's me
| skip dat boss if I want to.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| If you want to play Pokemon and not do the Pokemon battles
| then you're on a weird edge case where it's debatable
| whether you're actually playing the game at all. If that's
| what you want, sure, go ahead.
|
| That's actually still very different. Removing fighting
| from the game vs doing it but with infinite health. The
| former is at least self consistent I guess.
| pr0zac wrote:
| They enjoy or get satisfaction from one part of the game
| without enjoying or getting satisfaction from another
| part. Being happy there are methods to skip or minimize
| the part they don't like is pretty reasonable. There's no
| reason in a recreational hobby to struggle through
| something you don't enjoy in order to do something you
| do.
|
| Personally I think the battles are the best part of
| Pokemon but if folks like the story, the
| exploration/discovery/search, or the collecting parts of
| Pokemon but don't like the battles it doesn't hurt me if
| they do something to minimize them and they aren't lesser
| for doing so.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Doesn't hurt me if someone decides to shoot themself in
| the knee but I still have pretty strong opinions against
| it.
|
| Judging people by their choices is pretty much
| instinctual human behavior.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| Agreed. I spent dozens of hours playing GTA5 and literally
| never made any progress in the story. I had too much fun
| driving around like a crazy person, constantly using the
| cheat code to avoid dying.
| Arrath wrote:
| It's a good thing its a signle player game and someone
| cheating in their playthrough has absolutely no impact on
| your own enjoyment of the same game!
|
| I agree re: cheaters in multiplayer games, though. Except for
| the rare cases of "everyone gets to!" ala CoD:MW2 lobbies
| where the cheater/host set the game to where everyone could
| fly and shoot massively explosive rounds. That's good fun,
| for a few rounds.
| butz wrote:
| Cheats graduated into "assist features" (invincibility, reduced
| damage, etc.), which you can toggle in game options. Some
| recent games, like Psychonauts 2 and Control have them and does
| not penalize players for using them.
| [deleted]
| ketzo wrote:
| Well, the modern version of this is very granular difficulty
| sliders.
|
| In the name of accessibility, a lot of recent games allow you
| to customize the _hell_ out of your gameplay experience --
| things like "how hard do enemies hit?", "how easily can I find
| ammo?", even "how hard is it to make jumps?", and so on.
|
| Hades has a setting called God Mode, where every time you die,
| you just get straight up 1% stronger, stacking infinitely.
|
| Cheats in single player games aren't dead - they've evolved!
| the_only_law wrote:
| What really disappoints me is I'm seeing a lot of YouTubers and
| streamers advertise really hard challenge they do in games ,
| and even often sometimes advertise them as 100% legit.
|
| Those interest, as some of these challenges are extremely
| difficult, and I'm curious to learn what stragties they used.
| Then usually I get mid way through the, the explains the issues
| that make the challenge hard, before immediately dumping a
| console command to instantly bypass them.
| nvrspyx wrote:
| I like WeMod[0], which is a unified GUI for trainers. It
| supports a lot of games, handles a lot of the heavy lifting
| (e.g. starting the game in offline-only mode for multiplayer
| games), shows any extra steps that you might have to take for a
| specific game, and the developers are very quick at putting out
| trainers for new games and updating trainers for older games
| when needed. You can even see the queue of the games that
| they're working on supporting/updating.
|
| I also like the Xbox Gamebar widget for those games that are
| hard to alt-tab out of.
|
| 0: https://www.wemod.com/
| aloisdg wrote:
| Not open source though
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| you can also use a memory editor
| Karunamon wrote:
| Neither are most games. If you are opposed to non-free
| software on moral grounds, then the utility of a tool like
| this is pretty limited for you.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Anyone remember the infinite masterball cheat (red and blue)
| that required surfing up and down the eastern side of Cinnabar
| Island and fighting the MissingNo. pokemon? Good times. Also, I
| would 100% buy a Nintendo Switch if they released a remastered
| version of red/blue/yellow (no additional pokemon ffs)
| especially with online multiplayer.
| OmahaBoy69 wrote:
| Fire Red/Leaf Green using RetroArch + NetPlay?
|
| Alternatively, check out PokeMMO. It's basically a
| multiplayer Pokemon game built on the roms of the original
| games (supports gen 1, and 3-5). There isn't a native Switch
| build though so you'd need to dualboot Android or Linux if
| you wanted to make that happen.
| Arrath wrote:
| I had foolishly used every rare candy I'd found before I
| learned about the item dupe glitch. I then proceeded to run
| around the entire world searching for hidden items hoping I'd
| missed one. By the 3rd or 4th city I painstakingly searched
| tile by tile, I found one!
|
| Adult me wishes I still had that determination and
| persistence, fuck.
| rpearl wrote:
| Let's Go Eevee/Pikachu is a remake of red/blue
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Oh really? Is there a catch?
| mattnewton wrote:
| Play on PC! Plenty of excellent modding communities, or just
| the ability to drop into a dev console for a bit on most games
| there. My partner often does this to reduce parts of games she
| does not find enjoyable.
| [deleted]
| bitofhope wrote:
| I also occasionally enjoy cheating in video games, but it's
| rarely about the game itself at that point anymore. I've
| noticed it's not really about avoiding tedious or unpleasant
| parts of the game for me. I just think it's funny to have
| tutorial enemies yielding astronomical amounts of XP and gold
| or to have random Great People born in my cities every single
| turn. No kill like overkill.
|
| It's also educational. Creating overpowered joke Civ4 mods and
| reading disassemblies of NES games to adjust numbers in an
| emulator's debugger make for fun semi-practical programming
| puzzles. Honestly, I think I enjoy the process of cheating more
| than the result.
|
| Try it out sometime! Load up some old game in gdb and start
| messing with the numbers. It can be fun.
| draw_down wrote:
| FunnyBadger wrote:
| Some of the most popular YouTube channels are similar: people
| doing "mundane chores" - some watch for ASMR but I think a lot of
| it to connect to the real world - because online is not very
| satisfying after you get used to it after the first dopamine
| hits:
|
| * Lawn care and mowing - my favorites - both are Christians and
| do the charity of free lawn care for those having troubles
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSI40gkivzw
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unQl_quNh-w
|
| * Rug cleaning - my favorite - those boots! But wait until the
| end of some of his videos - it's a surprise
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m_m9WCXwpY
|
| * Construction - my favorite - he shows rain or shine, sick or
| not; with a wonderful down-home accent
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1-svX2Oq6M
|
| * Repair - my favorite - makes me appreciate his skill and
| confirms I'll never want to do it myself. I'm not for sure but
| reckon he's fixin' to repair that old boy.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZHws5d4rNU
|
| * Art Restoration
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egsEKeCXf60
|
| * Magnet Fishing
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlOEcihXsU0
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_LjAL84CYE
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O55nCaG2QM
|
| A common theme - they are NOT really knowledge economy jobs/work.
| Not everyone can become programmers. And online is far lower
| "information/novelty" than the real world. Another theme - these
| people are happy doing what they are doing - you can tell.
| Finally most of them how "fly-over accents" which is what most
| people experience everyday so it's more relatable to most people.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Very interesting! Though the last paragraph seems to fall into
| certain perspective. For example ...
|
| > Not everyone can become programmers.
|
| And not everyone can do construction. In fact, there's a
| reputation programmers have of not being the handiest ...
|
| > Finally most of them how "fly-over accents" which is what
| most people experience everyday so it's more relatable to most
| people.
|
| Most people live on the coasts. CA is a much more common accent
| than Idaho. Also, IIRC and IME, regional accents are
| disappearing.
| schubart wrote:
| You might enjoy unclogging:
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=1-zEvy3BaUw
| PaulHoule wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Sunshine
| imwillofficial wrote:
| batch12 wrote:
| Thanks for letting us know. Want me to hold your spot for
| later, or are you done with this one?
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Please do hold my spot, I'll be back by sometime next week.
| rco8786 wrote:
| I won't speculate why but I will posit that this is not a new
| phenomenon for the casual gamer. Consider The Sims, originally
| released 22 years ago and enthralled a huge audience of people
| who had no other interest in games. Where the purpose of the game
| was to literally play house and go to work. Now that everyone has
| a gaming "console" in their pocket perhaps it's not surprising
| that these more monotonous time killers have caught on with the
| broader audience.
| erellsworth wrote:
| I remember playing The Sims when it first came out. It felt
| like someone had just distilled the drudgery and futility of
| modern life into a digital form. I never understood the appeal.
| dragontamer wrote:
| I played "The Sims" a lot when it came out. And so did a lot of
| other people I knew.
|
| Things I did in the Sims:
|
| * Box in one sim into a room to see how long they can survive
| by themselves.
|
| * Set various sims on fire.
|
| * Try to get sims to drown in the pool.
|
| * Holding house parties WHILE people are drowning, to see their
| social scores drop at the horror of dead bodies.
|
| * Try to "summon the clown".
|
| * Try to kill the clown by burning its picture / effigy on top
| of the fireplace.
|
| Etc. etc.
|
| ----------
|
| "The Sims" isn't about "housework". It was about "pretend
| house", the same toy-houses / Poly-pocket / action figures that
| we kids grew up with except in video game form.
|
| Just as I imagined fights and killing and battles with action
| figures as a (younger) child, the Sims offered me a "virtual"
| version of that, where I can play around and toy with the sims.
|
| I wasn't completely a "Sim Sociopath" (I often made "new saves"
| when I was in a sociopathic mood). I also tried to reach the
| top of the job ladders (level 10 jobs and whatnot) and tried to
| make lots of money sometimes. But not always.
|
| Sometimes, you just want to watch the world burn, and "The
| Sims" 100% allowed you to mess up the dollhouse's life
| entirely.
|
| -------
|
| I never got into Grand Theft Auto, but based off of what I've
| seen in that game... it sounds more like a sandbox game than a
| 3rd person adventure game. (Where simulated people act "kinda
| sorta" like a human with social effects, so you can mess around
| with the world with your own sick, twisted imagination. Or jump
| off a building with a motorcycle to see if you can reach the
| other building with enough speed (etc. etc.))
| dixego wrote:
| And of course, don't forget "The Painting Goblin", in which
| you make an inescapeable, fully equipped basement home and
| lock one of your sims in there. Then you force them to get
| _extremely_ good at painting, such that one of their
| paintings can sell for thousands and comfortably support the
| rest of your sims family, who never have to work a day in
| their lives.
| rco8786 wrote:
| Never heard of this strategy, but devious and brilliant in
| a psychotic kind of way
| anoncow419 wrote:
| I also partook in this, except with lots of "goblins". I
| forced them to live in a house locked away from the outside
| world with plenty of canvasses in the house, and plenty of
| things to do that weren't painting (indoor pool).
|
| The specialty rule is that there weren't enough beds, so I
| tried to get them all into relationships so they would
| share beds with minimal interaction. If they didn't, then
| some would pass out on the floor.
|
| They all lived a life of luxury with how much money they
| printed.
| criley2 wrote:
| I don't think the average sims users played the game to burn
| houses down. It's among the most popular game in history not
| because people wanted to kill their sims, but because it was
| the first game to appeal to traditionally feminine activities
| like interior design, socializing and family-making. I get
| that many of us may have drowned some sims or goofed off, but
| that's not why the game is among the most popular game of all
| time.
|
| Look at the still active mod community, social network
| communities or youtube communities. There are some goofballs
| doing extremely antisocial things but the 99% of that
| community are authentically playing the game and enjoying it
| as an interior design / life simulator.
|
| I fundamentally believe that game developers ignore female
| and feminine interests in games to their massive detriment,
| and games like the Sims demonstrate the massive size of the
| feminine audience for non-violent and rewarding peaceful
| games.
| mrcheesebreeze wrote:
| You just decribed the appeal of sandbox games in the most
| morbid way lol.
|
| You are right, games let us do things you couldn't and they
| just give you more control.
|
| Sandbox games specifically just let you do whatever you want,
| from testing to see how long npcs can survive X scenario to
| making the perfect environment in your eyes.
|
| Thats why my most played game is garry's mod. One day I am
| putting npcs into a mini world war and the other I am pitting
| them against a death robot I build.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > Sandbox games specifically just let you do whatever you
| want, from testing to see how long npcs can survive X
| scenario to making the perfect environment in your eyes.
|
| Its really no different from how most children act,
| honestly.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N_RZJUAQY4
| [deleted]
| willmw101 wrote:
| While there might be overlap, the sims offered players
| status/career simulation, the option of mating and killing the
| sims, and a whole host of other things that represented
| departures from someone's actual life. I'd guess the appeal of
| the sims was more down to simulated optionality of lifestyles
| and relationships (+ obvious destructive fun through fires,
| grim reaper etc) than it was about doing one mundane task.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Owning a house to power wash is a departure from actual
| millennial life.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I know someone who concocted very elaborate love
| dodecahedrons, "and the child is not his, and he doesn't
| know!"
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| I am not going to jump through the hoop to read the article, but
| when it comes to youtube/twitch the biggest factor is not the
| game choice but the personality that is playing it. A
| powerwashing simulator stream is basically a longform improvised
| podcast with some white noise and a livechat.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| It's the singer, not the song.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| A lot of youtube is the modern equivalent of laugh tracks; you
| can watch something as-is, or you can watch someone with
| someone else prompting how you should feel about it.
| LegitShady wrote:
| its not a laugh track, its a personality who presents it,
| which is something totally different from a laugh track.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| I gotta agree, I've started watching people play cities
| skylines because I like that game and it's just fun to see
| people who are willing to spend A LOT more time than me playing
| and modding taking the game to it's extremes. Another fun
| channel is the fellow, Josh? from "let's game it out" on
| youtube. He captures a type of play that I did when I was
| younger and spent all my time coloring outside the lines so to
| speak, in the game worlds.
| Otternonsenz wrote:
| I'm so thankful for you and the child post to yours that
| brought up "Let's Game It Out"! As someone who enjoys
| breaking games for fun and profit, it is delightful to watch
| him do things the game never thought to correct for (Thinking
| specifically about how he's helped Hydroneer fix in game
| economy bugs, haha)
|
| Another person who does similar gameplay, but more in depth
| is a YouTuber called Ambiguous Amphibian. Imagine the depths
| of where Josh is willing to go, and then add a layer of
| someone talking about philosophy and tying it back into the
| game they are playing. Would very much recommend if you are
| into LGIO!
| bombcar wrote:
| The cities skylines channels are great because you get to see
| someone knowledgeable about the game (and sometimes city
| planning itself, like
| https://www.youtube.com/c/CityPlannerPlays - I now know a bit
| more about Skylines but an awful lot more about how a city is
| built) build something. It can be very entertaining both in
| the discussion available and also in the "hey he did what I
| would have done" way - similar to watching Jeopardy, I guess.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Seconding the recommendation for Josh at "lets game it out".
| Oh, wow, the time spent on the builds to make the game do
| things it was never designed to do - and funny commentary at
| that. he old content is definitely worth watching as well.
|
| Link to make things easier:
| https://www.youtube.com/c/LetsGameItOut/featured
| [deleted]
| wolverine876 wrote:
| It seems like any such task or hobby - a major benefit is a
| feeling of mastery. To the degree that it is mastery, there are
| healthier ways to meet this natural psychological need.
| endymi0n wrote:
| > Mundane chores are all the rage in gaming
|
| Oh, are they? Spontaneous nostalgia ensues...
|
| https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Donald_Duck%27s_Playground (1984)
| lupire wrote:
| Minequackft!
| NoGravitas wrote:
| "But gaming companies have identified the best part of work --
| creative achievement ... The concept recognizes that working
| without the bother of deadlines or micromanagement can be a lot
| of fun."
|
| Imagine if we did that to actual jobs. But no, instead we
| simulate satisfying work conditions for profit.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation
| lupire wrote:
| I mean, you can get a job cutting grass at your own pace for
| $4/hr if you want.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| My son leaves the iPad running 24/7 to do 'AFK grinding'. I
| seriously don't get it.
| Slartie wrote:
| Did someone already develop a dishwasher loading/unloading
| simulator game? Could be a smash hit!
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I know there's a VR cooking/kitchen one, maybe that one?
| maxiepoo wrote:
| Not sure about unloading the dishwasher but unpacking was
| pretty fun: https://www.unpackinggame.com/
| Navarr wrote:
| Unpacking was fun not because of the mundane chore but b/c
| the chore was telling a story through the environment of the
| house and the items unpacked.
|
| What a beautiful game
| tialaramex wrote:
| Right. When you move in to the boyfriend's place and
| there's not really enough space for what you have, and so
| your art stuff must be "tidied away" out of sight I was
| like "Oh - oh no..." and then IIRC the next move is back to
| your childhood bedroom. No need for words.
|
| [Although if you do want some words, those words are "Fuck
| Off Fund"]
| teh_klev wrote:
| I was watching the promo video thinking this was a very
| wholesome game, until I saw the electric toaster sitting in
| the bath :)
| petercooper wrote:
| _Could be a smash hit!_
|
| I see what you did there.. :)
| prawn wrote:
| I would play a VR dish unloading game where I had to throw
| breakable items into place from a distance and hope they
| balanced or that breakage was minimised.
| ridgered4 wrote:
| There's a VR game series (?) called job simulator that has
| you doing joke versions of common jobs, apparently for some
| AI overlord's amusement. I haven't played it but my kids
| watch a Let's Play kind of deal of it on youtube and it
| actually looks fun and funny to just make a huge mess dumping
| all the wrong fluids into a car or hurling hot dogs at a
| customer.
| yissp wrote:
| Tetris?
| Slartie wrote:
| Tetris doesn't incorporate a physically-correct simulation of
| water that needs to be sprayed in between dishes in order to
| remove the gunk, so the strategy to win Tetris would not be
| helpful to win a proper dishwasher simulator game, even
| though there are of course some similarities.
| Klaster_1 wrote:
| The only ever video game idea I had was a VR hand dryer
| simulator crossed with some Guitar Hero and RPG elements. You
| can build it up with historical hand dryers and funky toilet
| locations. It doesn't really matter around what activity the
| core gameplay revolves if the end result is fun.
| Slartie wrote:
| I like this one too. You could add expansion packs that also
| simulate different soap dispensers and water armatures, so
| the story arc of how the hands got wet in the first place is
| covered as well. And challenges to remove various types of
| gunk from your (virtual) hands in the most efficient way
| possible (less water, less soap used, fastest,...).
| alephnan wrote:
| There was a game 20 years ago called a Work Time Farm where you
| work for literal Pennies in a sweatshop factor putting caps on
| pens. If you don't have access to a PlayStation portable, you can
| also go play Amazon Turk
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_Time_Fun
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Pressure washing is not a mundane chore. There's something
| cathartic about wiping away a decade's worth of grime in an
| instant with a stream of water powerful enough to cut your arms
| off.
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| Even easier if they are stoned out of their face!
| 60654 wrote:
| Gamedev here. It's nice that the article recognizes the recent
| "mellow games" popularity. There's always been that current in
| gaming - in the 2010s "walking simulators" were popular (but with
| much more focus on story), in 2000s / late 1990s it was "game
| toys" like The Sims, or online MUDS and Second Life and so on.
|
| People always wanted virtual places to just chill, and not have
| to be challenged all the time or have to struggle etc.
|
| But also the article's focus on chores feels like a distraction.
| It's not that chores as such are exciting, it's more that you're
| messing around in a virtual world with often unexpected physics
| (job sims), or otherwise simplifying the complexity of real life
| (trucking sims etc). And lots of this popularity is also because,
| with Unity and Unreal, it has become very easy to make these
| kinds of physics-based 3D worlds with wacky physics, especially
| for tiny teams on small budgets - so lots and lots of people are
| making them.
| indigochill wrote:
| I personally feel there's a distinction between what's probably
| usually meant by "mellow games" (my drug of choice is still
| Euro Truck Simulator on that front) and MUDs, though. MUDs can
| be mellow, sure, but at least the ones I played had a lot more
| variety to them than the "X Simulator" genre which tend to have
| a narrower scope (and maybe more detail within that scope).
|
| I guess I'd compare my experience of MUDs most closely with the
| Harvest Moon/Rune Factory genre in that you can fight monsters
| and level up or socialize with other characters (in this case,
| real people!) or take part in various in-character
| activities/festivals/etc. Much like some modern MMOs like WoW
| or Final Fantasy in some respects except I find the creativity
| lies more with the players even in the modern MUD scene.
| grimgrin wrote:
| I always like to link this when MUDs are mentioned
|
| http://mudstats.com/Browse
| munk-a wrote:
| I'd really suggest going by one of the vote based rankers -
| since they tend to reflect more active communities much
| better. So...
| http://www.topmudsites.com/forums/mudlist.html
| joshlemer wrote:
| What do you mean by walking simulator, you mean RPGs like
| Skyrim, Fallout, etc?
| dagw wrote:
| "Walking simulators" is term for games the focus is on
| exploration and storytelling rather than combat and more
| traditionally skill based gameplay mechanics. Most of the
| game loop involves walking from place to place, enjoying the
| scenery and discover the next part of the story. As a rule
| you're not really tested in the game and as such you cannot
| really fail the game, although the choices you make can lead
| to 'better' and 'worse' endings.
| account42 wrote:
| No, Walking Simulator generally refers to games that eschew
| almost all gameplay besides walking around and looking at
| things. Like with any genre, there is no hard line of what is
| or isn't a walking simulator but think games like Dear Esther
| [0], Firewatch [1] or Proteus [2]. While RPGs typically do
| have a focus on story, there is also a heavy character
| building and/or progression component as well as almost
| always some form of combat.
|
| [0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/203810/Dear_Esther/
| [1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/383870/Firewatch/ [2]
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/219680/Proteus/
| lapetitejort wrote:
| I've noticed that while initially derided as not being
| "real games", AAA games have started to co-opt the design
| into even the most action-heavy games. Uncharted, God of
| War, and Returnal have long sections of just walking and
| character building.
| astrange wrote:
| Since Uncharted is an attempt to make a game series by
| putting AAA game stuff in the skeleton of an Indiana
| Jones movie, it suffers what they call "ludonarrative
| dissonance" by not just being a walking simulator game.
|
| Indiana Jones might kill one guy per movie; Nathan Drake
| has shot thousands. He's one of the most prolific mass
| killers in human history. And yet the cinematic parts of
| the game don't seem to notice.
| benibela wrote:
| Perhaps Tomb Raider 1 is a walking simulator? You do not
| kill many humans
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| > Indiana Jones might kill one guy per movie; Nathan
| Drake has shot thousands. He's one of the most prolific
| mass killers in human history.
|
| Having no idea about either of these games, I guess this
| is because, again, they combine a story-heavy narrative
| with a plain old shooter. I sometimes wish that these
| games which have interesting setting and/or narratives
| would actually try to innovate on the gaming part and
| avoid the "just kill them all" genre.
|
| There should be something more between a "walking
| simulator" and a "kill them all" that allows you to enjoy
| the setting while still having some type of actual game
| inside.
| ssully wrote:
| That is kind of what survival games or "minecraft-likes"
| are. A lot of those games have little to no combat. Most
| of the game being enjoying the setting while engaging in
| the light game systems. No Man's Sky is probably the best
| example I can think of; while there is combat it is
| almost entirely optional or avoidable.
| corrral wrote:
| Depending on the walking simulator, they've got more in
| common with some kind of immersive art installation than
| a "game". I get why people want to draw the distinction.
|
| > Uncharted
|
| Funnily enough, my favorite parts of Uncharted 4 were the
| parts where it became a walking simulator. I was
| surprised both that the game contained so much of that,
| and that I liked it better than the rest of the game.
| jerf wrote:
| Games constantly have this tension of 1. wanting to
| include story 2. but a truly interactive story is really
| freaking hard (no sarcasm), so 3. the story isn't
| interactive, which means that 4. the solved problem of
| telling non-interactive stories is cinema, so games use
| cinematic techniques.
|
| The problem is that this strange attractor for games is
| constantly pulling the game into just being a movie,
| because the need to control things for the cinematic
| portion spreads. If I need you to be wearing a shirt with
| pockets for this cutscene, you can't shop for arbitrary
| clothes, or they just don't show up in a cutscene. If
| this character needs to be alive for a cutscene five
| hours in, you can't kill them now. If you can't kill them
| now, you must be denied the interactivity to do so. It is
| very difficult to confine this need for control in a
| story-heavy game because it naturally tends to spread out
| until everything is completely controlled for the benefit
| of the cinema and it is just a fancy movie.
|
| I'm neither condemning nor praising this right now. Just
| describing.
|
| "Walking simulators" solve the problem by essentially
| stripping you of all ability to change the environment
| except on very specific rails. This can support non-
| linear story telling, but not arbitrarily-changing
| stories. In the case of AAA games, a key indicator of
| this is your character suddenly holstering the weapon
| that is otherwise their constant companion with no player
| input, and since the only verb you meaningfully had to
| change the environment up to this point was "shoot", now
| you have no environment changing abilities, and the game
| need not explain why suddenly everyone and everything in
| the world is bulletproof since you simply can not fire.
|
| That said, I think the case for calling them "not real
| games" has some virtue to it. It isn't like there's a
| bright shining line, but there's certainly "games" that
| are more interactive (in the limit, consider something
| like Minecraft) and there are games that are less
| interactive (in the limit, things that are essentially
| just choose your own adventure), and as is so often the
| case in practical philosophy, just because we can't draw
| a bright shining line doesn't mean we can't at least come
| close, or that the inability to draw a line means that we
| have to pretend there are no differences at all.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Thanks, that is enlightening analysis.
|
| > a truly interactive story is really freaking hard
|
| Why do you think that is? I am not ignorant of reasons
| and explanations, such as needing too much content, but
| what do _you_ think are the fundamental reasons?
| lapetitejort wrote:
| You, the real human, cannot say whatever you want to the
| NPCs. Instead you either have to rely on a few scripted
| choices, or a silent character. Neither of those are very
| fun. Interactive also implies the ability to change
| outcomes. That is also difficult as every outcome
| requires writing, animating, etc. So games give the
| illusion of choice with a few well defined branches, then
| railroad you into a few endings.
|
| Another approach is to not craft an explicit narrative.
| Just give a fleshed out, lived-in world and let the
| person explore. Let knickknacks, street trash,
| architecture, NPC behavior, etc tell the story. How can a
| game describe a dystopian world without an NPC saying "I
| sure do hate being oppressed!" and giving a questline for
| toppling the government? Maybe draconian transportation
| systems, NPCs eyeing the character if not dressed right,
| ugly architecture seeping into established spaces.
| mherdeg wrote:
| This is kind of a sliding scale -- I'd put Jazzpunk or
| Thirty Flights of Loving in the same category but I think
| they're traditionally considered "adventure games".
|
| Feels like a very different genre from, like, IF where you
| have to work hard to see the whole story (Trinity, Curses).
| Beltalowda wrote:
| I always considered these games to be more or less the
| successor to LucasArt-style point & click adventures.
| ansible wrote:
| I consider walking simulators to be in the same category
| as the old LucasArts-style point & click adventures.
|
| Often there is the very reduced or entirely eliminated
| puzzle-solving component.
|
| In the old point & click adventures, with the very linear
| story, if you can't figure out a puzzle, then you are
| stuck. You absolutely can't advance through the story.
|
| With the walking simulators, if you miss some bit, then
| you miss a part of the overall story, but you'll still
| get to the end and get the big picture. And you can
| usually go back and pick it up if you realized you missed
| something.
|
| BTW, some walking simulators I can recommend:
|
| Gone Home - very good story.
|
| What Remains of Edith Finch - also very good and
| heartbreaking story.
|
| Tacoma - also decent.
|
| Observation - trippy story
|
| Return of the Obra Din - this is a bit closer to the old
| point & click in the sense that you are a detective, and
| must actually Sherlock your way through.
| corrral wrote:
| I wouldn't have classed Return of the Obra Din as a
| walking simulator, but more of a puzzler like Myst. Was
| great, though. I'd recommend both The Talos Principle and
| The Witness, along those lines.
|
| My favorite pure "walking simulator" I've played, by a
| mile, is Firewatch. Haven't played What Remains yet,
| though.
| ansible wrote:
| That's fair. I haven't tried Fire Watch yet, but it is on
| my list.
| nsv wrote:
| In this genre is one of my favorite games, The Beginner's
| Guide by Davey Wreden.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| It's kind of a derogative descriptor for narrative games
| lacking in action. Games such as The Stanley Parable.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Action seems like the wrong word. Walking simulators lack
| any skill requirements. They're basically just choose your
| own adventure stories with a small number, or even just
| one, choice to make, but you navigate with a character
| movement instead of picking options from a menu.
| marvin wrote:
| It's still a bit of a derogatory term, and it doesn't
| entirely match up to history. Text adventure games, point
| & click adventure games and so on were very similar in
| gameplay mechanics to many games that get this moniker.
|
| Many of them do incorporate enough puzzle elements that
| the game consists of more than just taping down the up
| arrow. Often, the term feels like it attempts to reduce
| the term "game" to something more narrow than what the
| art form does and has encompassed, historically. Not all
| games require mechanical skill. Not all games are what
| you expect them to be. Etc.
| Melatonic wrote:
| This is part of the reason I like Untitled Goose Game - many of
| the things seem sort of mundane but they add a lot of humour to
| it and keep it fresh
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I love it when games have a creative mode. It's a nice balance
| between challenge and fun. Subnautica for example has a normal
| mode, a hardcore permadeath mode and a creative mode with no
| death and infinite resources. Building bases everywhere and
| watching the beautiful underwater landscapes and marine life is
| just so soothing.
| huachimingo wrote:
| LittleBigPlanet was a blast on creative/user-made maps.
|
| You could have a fairly stupid concept (free-falling sponge,
| with a shark that follows you while only in water), copy the
| whole level and mod it to whatever new state you wanted.
| asdff wrote:
| One of the most popular mods in skyrim makes it so your character
| now has to regularly eat, drink, wear warm clothing, stay dry,
| get decent sleep, etc. I never got the appeal. There's an
| argument that the game is realistic played this way, but its
| still a game. You press a button to go to sleep and the camera
| fades for five seconds. That's not exactly adding realism or
| making the game more satisfying or challenging really, that's
| adding mundane stuff to the list of chores you now have to do to
| mess around in game.
|
| Clearly there is an appeal for doing these tasks somehow for some
| people. I think it can get a little bit unhealthy if it becomes a
| means to escape the real life RPG you should be focusing on. I
| was a little bit in this state back when runescape was more
| popular 15 years ago or so. I would spend hours clicking around
| diligently gathering and preparing crafting materials in game,
| while I neglected very basic tasks around the home. Maybe people
| need to figure out how to turn laundry and dishes into a quest
| with checkpoints and lore and xp to get them as motivated as they
| are to do virtual chores.
| henriquecm8 wrote:
| People like to role-play, and having to do mundane stuff can
| make it easier to role for some people, and makes the game more
| immersive.
|
| I am not of those players, because I play mostly for the
| stories, but I understand why they do it.
| iamben wrote:
| I very much look forward to the HN post titled "I released a
| popular real-time office game, now people work for me for
| free..."
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Isn't that just outsourcing with extra steps?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Isn't that just outsourcing with extra steps?
|
| I mean a lot of software development and techie life has become
| gamified; github streaks, collecting stars, getting :+1: votes,
| apple watch circles, no-fap or no drinking streak apps; tinder
| stars, instagram votes, youtube watches, badges/achievements,
| the list goes on. Lots of things are gamified, and I'm actually
| surprised there's not more of video game style sound or visual
| effects when you do these things.
| asciimov wrote:
| My partner absolutely adores House Flipper a game where you clean
| up, repair, and decorate derelict houses.
|
| She, like the people in this article, really loves this style of
| game because there is no direct competition. Sure there are tasks
| to complete and achieve but there is no clock, no angry mobs of
| people yelling obscenities at you, and no enemies getting in your
| way while you try and do your thing.
|
| These games are good to veg out with, they give you some of the
| satisfaction of doing a good job, while keeping you from doing
| all the hard work.
|
| No it's not my kind of game, but House Flipper is now one of my
| top three games played on steam (for game time) because my
| partner uses my steam account for gaming.
| frozenlettuce wrote:
| it also seems funnier than passively watching Property Brothers
| asciimov wrote:
| Once you've watched an episode or two of the Property
| Brothers, you have really seen them all. Their style, along
| with the rest of the HGTV style, is starting to look tired
| and dated.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| One of the major criticisms of contemporary digital work is
| that there's very little tangible/ non-abstract evidence of
| work product.
|
| Even if you just dig ditches, at least you can say "hey I dig
| these ditches that I now see" at the end of the day. This is
| very satisfying to our brains.
|
| I predict a lot of future recreation will look like "visual
| evidence of accomplishment without needing the tedious labor
| required to do the same thing in the physical world."
|
| You can kind of see why Zuck cares so much about the meta verse
| from that angle, it's just too bad that he's so nuerodivergant
| he's getting the details wrong.
| m463 wrote:
| Makes me think of unpacking - a low key game to unpack boxes
| with a gentle story behind it.
| asciimov wrote:
| Dang, I'm gonna have to try that soon, after I'm done
| packing, moving, and unpacking...
| vorpalhex wrote:
| My game library falls into two categories - very engaging
| active games (Battlefield, Tarkov, etc) and very passive games
| like Keplerth or The Hunter.
|
| Sometimes you want to feel an adrenaline rush. Sometimes you
| just want to tend a garden or walk a forest.
| therein wrote:
| > Sometimes you want to feel an adrenaline rush. Sometimes
| you just want to tend a garden or walk a forest.
|
| And that's where Rust comes in. You're tending your garden,
| keeping your base in order and then people come with rockets
| and C4.
| capableweb wrote:
| The only difference between that and what GP said, is that
| in Rust you don't have any player agency in deciding _when_
| people come after you or not. Switching between adrenaline
| /calm single-player games, you get to decide at your own
| pleasure :)
| [deleted]
| ishjoh wrote:
| > Sometimes you just want to tend a garden or walk a forest
|
| I do both of these things a fair amount IRL, I'm not trying
| to single you out I just want to understand motivations for
| playing these games, is there a reason you do these
| activities in a game as opposed to IRL?
| ljp_206 wrote:
| A few potential reasons: In games the rewards are much more
| immediate, even if we play a game that requires waiting.
| Gardens and forests may not be near, available, or
| accessible when gamers are ready to relax. Gamers may not
| be physically able to partake in such activities. You might
| need to pay or buy something (shoes, a car, a park pass,
| garden mulch, tools...) to participate.
| ohwellhere wrote:
| Do you sometimes like to eat apples and sometimes like to
| eat oranges?
| corrral wrote:
| You can start a game instantly. No travel. No travel
| expense, either. No packing. No un-packing. No arranging
| for someone to watch your pets if it's going to be long
| enough for that to matter. No dealing with taking the kids
| with you, or finding some other place for them to be. Your
| spouse doesn't have to want to go.
|
| No spiderwebs on your face. No biting and/or disease-
| carrying insects. No oppressive humidity. No getting soaked
| by a sudden rainstorm. No sunburns. No twisting an ankle
| and having a horrible time getting back out. No taking a
| wrong turn and ending up _having_ to go much farther than
| you 'd counted on, to get back.
|
| Much or all of the game world may be crafted to be
| interesting. Even very nice natural areas have boring bits,
| and you can't fast-travel past them.
|
| You can do it even if you're injured, or tired.
|
| If the game has tasks, they usually have far faster reward
| loops than their real-life equivalents. The real-life
| versions might have more clean-up or mess. You have to
| actually physically do a bunch of stuff where the game
| might have a button press. You also have to know _how_ to
| do it, and have the tools (if any) to do it. This is why
| obsessive players of games that feature gardening or
| farming usually don 't become avid hobby-gardeners in real-
| life.
| henriquecm8 wrote:
| > _No un-packing._
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/1135690/Unpacking/
| RC_ITR wrote:
| If the goal is visual evidence of accomplishment, then one
| gives you that while relaxing the other gives you that
| while bending over and tiring out your core/upper body.
|
| I won't make moralistic judgements on which is better, but
| I will say all else equal, a lot of people prefer physical
| passivity.
| LizardsAreCute wrote:
| While I do go for walks here, the nature in the Netherlands
| is mostly very boring.
| corrral wrote:
| True in _very_ large stretches of the US, as well. Though
| we also have a bunch of huge regions with beautiful,
| varied, striking natural environments, of course.
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| Ticks.
| ridgered4 wrote:
| It's cheaper (no need to buy supplies) so you can do things
| you'd never be able to afford IRL. Which also allows you to
| experiment with more things. This also lessens the
| consequences of failure.
|
| You can do the activity when there's free time (like at
| night) with no real planning.
|
| You can put the task down for months on end without
| negative results because time is constrained to the game
| world. Or put another way, constant upkeep tasks and their
| results can be perfectly saved.
|
| Game worlds can be tightly controlled if you wish it.
| Reality is uncontrollable.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I also go hiking in real life when possible, but that is a
| minimum commitment of four hours and by the time I get off
| work that isn't usually doable.
|
| On the other hand, it only takes about five minutes to boot
| a game and be walking the PNW.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| People live in flats with no garden, or don't live near a
| forest or anything beautiful really, or finish their shift
| when it's already dark. Or maybe it's just raining or 105 F
| outside.
| duckmysick wrote:
| I do gardening in my spare time but I also enjoyed playing
| Stardew Valley - a game where you bring back to life an
| abandonded farm.
|
| Video games have faster feedback loop compared to real
| life. You progress and get rewards much faster. For
| example, I could finish an entire growing season in one
| long evening of playing. And it's not just scaling time.
| The tasks themselves are simplified to balance complexity,
| difficulty, and fun. You only have a handful of tools that
| never break. You don't have to worry about plant diseses,
| pests, droughts, floodings, or freezing temperatures in
| spring. The only thing you need to manage is watering
| (which you have an infinite supply of) and crows (which are
| repelled with a scarecrow).
|
| The barriers of entry are lower too. There are games that
| let you drive a truck of fly a plane; things which would be
| prohibitively expensive in real life.
| vogt wrote:
| Same exact deal here. I LOVE powerwash simulator mentioned in
| the article. Also love sweating out hours in payday 2 getting
| raided by horde after horde of enemies.
| itronitron wrote:
| I think people gravitate toward the grinding tasks (mundane
| chores) because they provide stable incremental rewards for work
| done which is in stark contrast to many people's real world jobs.
| bart_spoon wrote:
| Seems like half of the comments here are from people who read the
| title and assumed the article was about grinding in many modern
| video games. The article is actually about the burgeoning genre
| of simulator titles for literal chores, like Power Washing
| simulator, Job Simulator, Unpacking, etc.
|
| While there may be some related underlying factors influencing
| both, they are very much not the same thing. As always, it helps
| to read the article before commenting.
| pvg wrote:
| Most of the comments are the comments are about the article and
| threads typically evolve to become more on-topic so you're
| better off writing something about it as well, rather than
| adding meta and did-you-read-the-article-ing. Plus the
| guidelines ask you to avoid that.
| sumy23 wrote:
| The millennial answer to never being able to afford a home.
| [deleted]
| acomjean wrote:
| After reading about Penn and Teller's desert bus game, I
| wondered why job simulators got any traction. 8 hour drive for
| 1 point....
|
| https://www.polygon.com/platform/amp/2013/7/10/4510388/why-t...
| UberFly wrote:
| Knowing Penn & Teller there's probably a cheat code that adds
| the occasional stripper hitch-hiker along the route. At least
| I would hope so.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Played an old, old Japanese game called 'Power Shovel'. It was
| a riot, particularly because of the Samurai warrior that would
| come out and insult you after every pathetic attempt to move
| your pile of dirt.
|
| What's old is new again!
| andai wrote:
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=8_LvBJtO208
|
| Wow that's a cool game, the destructible car is impressive,
| haven't seen that in any PS1 games! I wonder how they did
| that (if they hardcoded it with trigger points, or if there's
| some real physics going on).
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I think that little video shows exactly why "mundane
| chores" are the rage in gaming. You get paid $80k for less
| than 5 minutes of operating a power shovel, running up
| against a time limit.
|
| If each level was 8 hours of operating a power shovel out
| in the hot sun, and if you stop playing without calling in
| sick, or call in sick too many times you immediately lose
| and are banned from playing the game again, it might be a
| bit less popular...
| hinkley wrote:
| When you say "old" are you referring to the PlayStation game
| that came out in 2000?
|
| Paperboy came out in 1985:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paperboy_(video_game)
|
| It was in arcades. At one point I had it on PC, and boy did I
| get tired of that quick.
| andai wrote:
| The site wants my personal information (and possibly my money,
| it isn't clear) to allow me to read beyond the first paragraph.
| (Though to be fair, even what little is shown is sufficient to
| clarify the subject matter :)
| rasz wrote:
| In other news a record number of US teenagers never engaged in
| any real life 'mundane chores' in their life. "Physicals work is
| what our parents, or immigrants do!". 'PowerWash Simulator' is
| fun if you never worked all summer at a carwash, same with
| 'Viscera Cleanup Detail' etc.
| pyrophane wrote:
| When you say "in other news," is there any source for this?
| dusted wrote:
| The guy who figures out how to get something useful out of people
| harvesting their carrots in Minecraft will become insanely
| wealthy.
| Aunche wrote:
| Isn't Amazon doing something like this with the gamification of
| their fulfillment centers?
| kmlx wrote:
| i first had this idea more than a decade ago: a way to
| translate gaming tasks into something productive on the other
| end of the pipe. the gamer doesn't realise, and the company
| actually solves issues by just letting the gamer play the game.
|
| in the non-gaming world, i think the closest mass market idea
| has been google's captcha which actually trains an AI in the
| background. that's very naive and very simple, and definitely
| not a game, but imagine something similar with puzzles (i.e.
| Witness, the game, is all about puzzles. why not replace those
| puzzles with puzzles from real life that actually need
| solving).
| sidibe wrote:
| I think the work they do in the series Severance was like
| this. They were in some gamy looking interface and had no
| idea what they were actually doing but got good at doing it
| and apparently it was important
| saddestcatever wrote:
| If you haven't read Ender's Game, I highly recommend it based
| on this topic.
|
| I think the tricky part is - if it's an unsolved problem, how
| does the game know when a task is complete? Feedback loops
| are a core element of game design, and part of the reason
| tedious tasks can be satisfying, but unless it's directly
| manual labor, I'm unsure how to create a proper feedback loop
| dumb1224 wrote:
| I thought the same. Ender's Game and the cell
| classification task have something in common: the end
| status to achieve (whether to eliminate all opponents or
| identify something that's known). If we think this way,
| these two tasks could still be treated as machine learnable
| tasks (albeit poorer solution possibly). A genetic
| algorithm for example, could be trained to derive the means
| to achieve the goals. In cases where we don't know the end
| goal of the game, how do we train ourselves towards an
| unknown objective or without guidance of known answers.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Hmm.
|
| Perhaps we could use bored humans as an accelerator to
| heuristically solve NP-complete problems. Then we'd just
| need to do the verification step.
|
| All we need to do is prove that this produces a big-O
| improvement, and I think we could make a compelling
| business case.
|
| /s
| majewsky wrote:
| EVE Online has done several citizen science minigames over
| the years where human players can perform image-
| classification tasks.
|
| 2017: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/05/eve-online-
| citizen-sc...
|
| 2018: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/08/minigame-
| integrated-...
| mkr-hn wrote:
| They had a more recent one for covid research.
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/eve-online-project-discovery-
| cov...
| [deleted]
| jameshart wrote:
| Neil Stephenson's _REAMDE_ touches on this idea, and reaches
| the somewhat inevitable conclusion that if you can automate
| enough about a real world task that you can translate it into
| gaming terms, and determine automatically whether or not the
| player has succeeded at the task (in order to reward them 'in
| game' for completing the task), then you have probably done
| all the essential work needed to have a computer do the task
| in the first place.
| [deleted]
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Why require automated validation?
|
| In the real world, most tasks output as inputs to other
| tasks by other people. And those downstream people perform
| validation of incoming work.
|
| Delay reward until downstream validation passes.
| Game_Ender wrote:
| The foldit [0] game has players solving protein folding
| problems that have real world implications. More ideas in this
| angle would be data labeling type situations to power machine
| learning systems. These are currently done through
| MechanicalTurk or large offices in low cost areas of the world
| dedicated to the task.
|
| The tools are not usually that polished or that pleasant to
| use, and don't have the same gamified and reward angle. So if
| you could figure out how to package the work, add some whimsy,
| and cross validate results you might have something.
|
| 0 - https://fold.it/
| alar44 wrote:
| There's probably a way to literally mine crypto.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| There's the crypto / NFT games that generate a lot of money for
| their creators. Or, generated past tense, lmao.
| npteljes wrote:
| I see them as natural continuation of "simulation" games, titles
| like SimFarm from 1993, or Harvest Moon from 1996. These had
| several aspects that are explicitly micromanagement, like placing
| things one by one, waiting for some time, then clicking on
| everything once again.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| https://archive.ph/1OsVN
| joemaller1 wrote:
| It would be interesting if we could Ender's Game this with actual
| real life drones or something. But then, I can think of a million
| ways that could go horribly wrong.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| You mean what various militaries are doing right now? I mean
| the soldiers get paid but you know what I mean.
| mberning wrote:
| It's insane how much of my youth was literally wasted on dumb
| video games. It went way beyond normal levels of entertainment.
| Luckily after a year or two of college they started to lose their
| allure to me. But I knew many people that it seriously impacted
| their adult life. People dropped out of school and changed majors
| because they could not quit WoW, for example.
| rajamaka wrote:
| I look back on the time playing video games with buddies in
| high school more fondly than the time I spent playing
| competitive sport or throwing rocks at cars.
| mberning wrote:
| It depends on how you are evaluating it. Did I enjoy gaming?
| Yes very much. Did I enjoy it more than sports? For sure. Did
| gaming have more of a positive impact on my life than sports.
| Not a chance.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| Lots of these games have a few key things:
|
| #1 everyone likes doing things that are considered chores. They
| just don't like to do them when it gets boring / stressful. For
| example I like powerwashing... but if I had to do it for 10 hours
| straight I'd hate it too.
|
| #2 lots of those things require special circumstances, training,
| skills, big cost investment, risk. The game eliminates all that.
| Don't own a house? can still power wash without having to buy the
| gear, a house, and wait a few years.
|
| #3 risk is a big one. I enjoyed truck simulator (for a short
| bit). Why? Because I can veg out while driving and there's no
| consequences. Or literally plow through traffic and not care. I
| can be as careful / careless as I want to be and it just works.
|
| Its a way to take things you hate doing and have to pay attention
| while you do them, and let you veg out and enjoy the enjoyable
| part of the task.
| [deleted]
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| This makes it clear that people _just want_ to do something
| useful in their lives. Why isn 't real life building on this?
| What are the remaining differences?
|
| Is it the extra bureaucracy involved in earning money? Is it the
| feeling of being exploited when working for someone else? Is it
| the pressure to economically justify anything we might want to
| do?
|
| How much friction can we eliminate in work? What is essential,
| and what is not?
|
| I feel that humanity would be better served if the feeling of
| achievement was coupled with meatspace usefulness, and not just
| virtual creation.
| farleykr wrote:
| I don't think we'll ever be able to eliminate friction from
| "real" work and therein lies the reason why these games are
| popular. Real work requires sacrifice, sweat, disappointment
| and all the rest. These games allow you some semblance of the
| gratification without the friction.
| Sheeny96 wrote:
| You can reach 20 woodcutting in Runescape in < 1 hour as a
| complete noob to the game. The equivalent irl skill would
| take months or years of training. Video games artificially
| speed up the process of skill acquisition with a satisfactory
| level of dopamine release such that you will keep going.
| WJW wrote:
| Indeed and this time reduction is present in a great many
| forms. Imagine if a growing season in Stardew Valley took
| actual months instead of minutes, or if crossing a mid-
| sized kingdom on horseback took several weeks instead of
| the 20 minutes or so in most video games.
| indigochill wrote:
| Counterpoint: Sailaway does model real-world travel time
| and distance, although in that case it's the whole point.
| I actually kind of wish there was a Euro Truck Simulator
| mod or something that would make the distances realistic
| too.
| yoz-y wrote:
| > Real work requires sacrifice, sweat, disappointment and all
| the rest.
|
| But does it have to be like this?
| farleykr wrote:
| Yes. That's what makes it work. I think we sometimes have a
| perspective that we can optimize the struggle out of
| everything but that's simply not true. It's okay for life
| and the things we do with our life to be difficult and
| mundane. They're not always so but it's not a problem or
| out of the natural order of things when they are.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| We won't eliminate _all_ friction. But I 'm not satisfied
| with any answer that neglects finding out what we _can_
| eliminate.
|
| Cooking for your family feels very different than cooking at
| a corporate canteen, yet both are forms of useful work, and
| both involve some friction. The game makers know it - Euro
| Truck Simulator is full of both challenges (deadlines) and
| boredom (traffic jams), and I wouldn't call it frictionless.
|
| So, again, which friction can stay and which needs to go?
| farleykr wrote:
| I see what you're saying. And I agree it would be nice to
| remove friction where possible but I think it would happen
| in very specific, local contexts instead of some revolution
| around work itself. In some ways work is in and of itself a
| process of trying to remove friction and what can and
| should be removed is mostly dependent on the person or org
| and their goals. I also think it will just be whack-a-mole
| and removing some friction will just uncover another form
| of friction. So to me the question of what can stay and
| what can go just sounds like rearranging deck chairs on the
| titanic.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| > rearranging deck chairs on the titanic
|
| I think that's a pessimistic view. You posit that
| humanity will never be able to extract more than a tiny
| bit of the satisfaction lots of people feel when they are
| useful to the community.
|
| On the other side, a lot of anarchist thought has been
| proposing that smaller communities make people more
| satisfied, by removing emotional friction.
|
| Still from another direction, not all work needs to be
| tightly economically controlled, or justified, yet
| finances permeate work as pure overhead.
|
| Dismissing the idea that work can be better than it is
| today seems like a passive surrender.
| farleykr wrote:
| > You posit that humanity will never be able to extract
| more than a tiny bit of the satisfaction lots of people
| feel when they are useful to the community.
|
| The abilities to feel satisfaction and be useful are not
| directly linked to eliminating friction.
|
| I don't know anything about anarchist perspectives on
| smaller communities but I would actually hazard a guess
| that smaller communities would increase emotional
| friction but also the quality and sense of fulfillment
| that come from being deeply emotionally linked to others.
|
| I don't dismiss the idea that work can be better but I
| think there's an average amount of friction in work that
| can't be reduced. And from my perspective it makes me
| feel like I gain strength, courage, and skill from
| working at something that is always going to be difficult
| in some way and to some degree.
|
| To answer your original question as directly as possible:
| I think if an instance of friction disadvantages or
| oppresses someone or a group of people then we should
| seek to eliminate it.
| [deleted]
| snikeris wrote:
| Yeah I think it's scratching the innate human desire for
| progress. The rewarding feeling of progress without the
| friction of the real world.
| everforward wrote:
| > This makes it clear that people just want to do something
| useful in their lives.
|
| People want to do something with obvious, tangible impact in
| their lives. Most of these games have a very clear impact on
| the virtual world; that wall is clean, and I cleaned it. That
| house got built and I built it. Those shelves got stocked, and
| I did it. So on.
|
| In meatspace, most jobs are either heavily removed from a
| tangible benefit, or have bad pay and working conditions. You
| can be in HR or accounting or IT, and several steps removed
| from any kind of tangible end-product, or you can be a berry
| picker working in the heat for $7/hr.
|
| With the advent of the assembly line and exacerbated by
| offshoring, the high-value part of the production chain has
| become managing production rather than the production itself.
| WJW wrote:
| The article already mentions this:
|
| > The concept recognises that working without the bother of
| deadlines or micromanagement can be a lot of fun.
|
| And they're right: building things is indeed fun, it's the
| pressure of deadlines and handling your boss/clients/etc that
| can make it stressful. But I don't think you can take that out
| of a "job" situation; other people paying for your work is the
| entire point of jobs.
|
| If you are just doing things because you like it without anyone
| paying you for it, that's called a hobby even if you do the
| exact same things that you can also get paid for. (There is an
| obvious parallel here with the "getting paid for FOSS"
| discussion that pops up regularly on HN)
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| Until there's decisive evidence all the pressure, lack of
| transparency and politics is in fact necessary, there is no
| reason to believe it is. We've made impressive things and
| done impressive things without them for the entire history of
| our species.
|
| Most people really just want "do X, get Y" type of deals.
| Those deals are becoming increasingly more rare except for
| minimum wage jobs working you to the bone. Not having to deal
| with politics has become a luxury instead of rewarding a few
| individuals to deal with all the politics. Even something as
| simple as getting a salary indication is already a hassle for
| Average Joe.
|
| The job market can learn a lot from game design and
| gamification, but the guys at the top seem insistent on
| believing they know better than decades of research.
| WJW wrote:
| It seems relevant that all the "chore" games mentioned seem
| to be single player games where at most you compete against
| a few computer players that don't mind losing. In almost
| every job you will be playing multiplayer, and competing
| for scarce resources like promotions, money and power. The
| pressure, lack of transparency and politics stem from the
| fact that people in the workplace are usually interested in
| furthering their career over time and (except for the most
| rockety of rocket ships) can only get that if some of their
| colleagues don't.
|
| Even "do X, get Y" type of deals are a threat, since the
| amount of Y is finite and the more that goes to others, the
| less that goes to you. It gets even worse when you take
| into account that people can lie. Someone might only be
| pretending to be happy "doing X" for the rest of their
| lives and will actually stab their coworkers in the back
| for a promotion. The guys at the top are definitely not
| unaware of this dynamic.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| Oh, you might notice that I never mentioned a "job", only
| "work". Perhaps the concept of "job" is the friction that
| needs to be eliminated.
| sky-kedge0749 wrote:
| I'm skeptical of evolutionary psychology in general but if we
| think about prehistory a lot of work was doing stuff that had
| deadlines but you could easily understand what needed to be
| done. You have to go out and collect a bunch of nuts and
| berries, and there's a deadline because you'll starve if you
| don't get the food, but you know the food is out there and
| it's just a matter of getting it. Your ancestors have lived
| off food from this land for thousands of years, you know you
| will too. Similarly for simple crafting, you need to make the
| clothing or the clay pot but there's no barrier to doing it,
| you just have to do it. In these cases you could also have a
| boss, that is, some person with authority directing and
| judging you, but it's someone you know and someone whose role
| you will inevitably fill.
|
| I think the key difference in the modern world is that
| success is not guaranteed, for reasons that may be well out
| of your control, and failure is scary with unknown
| consequences. We can imagine a world with pretty much the
| same jobs and the same work, but with more security removing
| the intense stress people feel.
| indigochill wrote:
| Success wasn't guaranteed in the ancient world either. Even
| if you were cultivating crops, a drought you couldn't
| control could wipe out your crops. Or baddies could invade
| and steal your stuff and kill your people en masse.
|
| Overall, we have way more security than the ancient world
| did. Droughts are still a problem as the western US has
| been seeing, but at least we're at a point today where it
| just means food prices go up rather than food vanishing
| entirely and requiring migration to other countries or
| something.
|
| As for stress, largely European workers don't seem to feel
| the pressures that American workers do, which probably
| boils down to in part a mix of higher taxes leading to
| better safety nets as well as generally much more vacation
| time from work. Also politics in European countries
| generally isn't as polarized, though by no means is it
| perfect.
| sky-kedge0749 wrote:
| Farming as a necessity didn't happen until late
| prehistory and early history. Before that people hunted,
| fished or foraged for their daily food. They had nothing
| worth stealing or killing for or that couldn't be rebuilt
| quickly after an earthquake or other disaster. In the
| worst case they could just move a few miles away. Dying
| from a drought wiping out your crops or from being
| attacked by raiders from the mountains or from a warlord
| or pharaoh that claimed to rule over you didn't happen
| until later. Even then your own life was still simple to
| understand: being a farmer or shepherd or what have you.
|
| I don't mean to say this was all perfect, but instead
| that when we talk about the stress of modern jobs, we
| should go beyond saying no one likes deadlines or bosses,
| because the real problem is the, for some people
| literally daily, uncertainty.
| galoisgirl wrote:
| Well, there is gamification, whether you give a gold start to
| yourself or use an app like Habitica.
|
| Personally, I struggle with cleaning because it's truly
| Sisyphean work. Always the same, never done, even if you do it
| the results don't last.
|
| Games can be played whenever I feel like it, cleaning doesn't
| always work this way. A visit from the in-laws make it a chore,
| and my brain can't really let go of that label for some reason.
|
| Some work comes with physical discomfort: I don't think I'll
| ever feel like picking strawberries in the burning sun for too
| long.
| JoelMcCracken wrote:
| When I call clean, I use the time to listen to audiobooks,
| podcasts, attentively to music (versus just being something
| in the background while focus is elsewhere), etc. And
| focusing on the peace/serenity I feel when my area is tidy
| also helps.
|
| Hth
| __alexs wrote:
| As someone who has put too many hours into EVE online to count.
| I do mundane things in video games because of two different
| reasons.
|
| 1) The reward for doing the mundane thing is usually very
| direct and actually pretty decent if you commit to it. For
| example with enough grinding in EVE you can afford some very
| fancy spaceships. Or with hours of code raiding in Rust you can
| steal all of someones stuff by just typing in 4 digit codes for
| hours.
|
| 2) Doing the mundane thing in the game is still a form of
| escapism from doing the mundane thing in the real world. Except
| usually the video game isn't hardcore mode. If I don't do it
| and a die I just respawn. Meatspace doesn't have this luxury.
| In this case the video game is an escape from existential
| dread.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| I would second this sentiment. As a teen I loved the action
| of Privateer and RPGs but found some of the grind tedious.
| Later as an adult I found certain kinds of grind kind of fun,
| to a point. Reaching the pay off is key. Things that feel too
| out of reach or have pay-to-win shortcuts just completely
| deflate the reward and destroy my motivation.
|
| Cheating in MP also ruined it for me. Now I mostly do SP and
| occasionally cheat there when it feels like the game is
| getting too grindy or unfair.
| kingaillas wrote:
| Haha, I used to do Planetary Interaction in wormhole space,
| to chill out. It was peaceful, setting up my extractors,
| harvesting raw materials, then running through various
| factories to obtain upgrades or finished products.
|
| Of course, loading up my cargo and bringing to market was
| tense... but I never was attacked, probably because I only
| went to wormholes from hisec space. (The wormhole farming
| corp I was in maintained various stations but I went with the
| not-as-lucrative ones accessible from hisec and skipped the
| low/no sec ones. As I recall, I stopped a few years ago.)
| prawn wrote:
| Not really a direct example, but the friction of accounting for
| and paying tax strikes me as quite insane in most places. I pay
| a bookkeeper and an accountant thousands a year, plus deal with
| loads of hassle on top of that. I can't imagine that if you
| designed an enjoyable working lifestyle from scratch, you'd
| decide the whole tax rigmarole as we know it was essential.
| mouzogu wrote:
| we are just here to consoom product and get excite for next
| product.
| [deleted]
| NoGravitas wrote:
| What you're describing is Fully Automated Luxury Communism,
| where most parts of work are automated, and people work under
| non-alienated conditions simply for that feeling of
| achievement. Or in the words of Captain Jean-Luc Picard: The
| economics of the future is somewhat different. You see, money
| doesn't exist in the 24th century. The acquisition of wealth is
| no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better
| ourselves and the rest of humanity"
|
| People need to feel useful; these chore simulators are
| parasitic on that natural impulse.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| Well, there is liability, safety, and practicality. I have no
| desire for a career change, but trying a forklift or city bus
| or train in a simulator is a fun afternoon. I don't think the
| city is gonna let me joyride in their equipment, anyways.
|
| You can go over to r/powerwashingporn and see a lot of
| homeowners renting some equipment for an afternoon, but you
| don't want them going out to public land and cleaning whatever
| they want because they might just damage stuff with the wrong
| chemicals or techniques. I know beaurocracy isn't very fun but
| nobody wakes up with the sole desire to manufacture red tape
| for no reason.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I'm an avid player of these mundane "chore" games and I play
| them because they are fun.
|
| I don't want to be a truck driver, but I want to play Euro
| Truck Simulator with a complete racing wheel setup. The way I
| see it, driving a truck across Europe while trying to follow
| all of the rules to minimize cost is not that much different
| mentally than driving a race car around a race track trying to
| minimize lap time. But it is less physically fatiguing.
|
| Even though these games seem dumb (I get poked fun at a lot for
| playing them), most of the time, their game loops are tight
| enough that you feel the same fulfillment as if you were
| playing the latest Mario. They are always adding another
| challenge to the game with each level, so that by the end,
| you've developed a repertoire of skills that you can use to
| tackle a variety of complicated situations.
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